


the dragon had really good penmanship

by AetherAria



Category: Inn Between (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Mentions of canon violence, implications of marie still bein' a bit... dragon-y, wrote this because i'm obsessed with marie basically she's so INTERESTING as a CHARACTER
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24905545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AetherAria/pseuds/AetherAria
Summary: Three little girls are in the dungeon. One little girl awaits the throne. None are free, just yet.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	the dragon had really good penmanship

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song Dragon, by Breathe Owl Breathe

Marie is thirteen, and she knows many things. She has been stolen, and cursed, and orphaned. She knows the taste of char, the feel of magic fire between her teeth. Her tutor says her skill for brewing poisons is remarkably promising, she knows two languages well besides her native tongue, and is studying a third. Her penmanship is impeccable. She knows what her own body looks like, with an ax embedded in her neck. She knows that Seri still wakes calling out for her father, most nights.

Marie is thirteen, and so is Lydda. Lydda, who knows many things of her own. Strange things, like how to predict the day’s weather by the sight of the clouds and the direction of the wind. Lydda, who is polite but speaks her mind regardless, who writes nearly as well in common as Marie does, who purses her lips and squints when she’s unsure, who can scoop her youngest sister into a piggyback without needing to look at her to do it.

Lydda, thrown into the dungeon with her sisters because Marie’s father is so steeped in fear that it is the only tool he still understands how to use. Marie knows that this is not her fault. The choices her father makes are not her own. She knows she has no true power, here. Marie knows, also, that guilt doesn't always follow logical paths.

There are some words, Marie now knows, that can only be passed in whispers, passed above hands clasped between the cold interruption of iron bars.

Lydda has freckles, a scattering of even darker skin across the bridge of her nose, her cheeks, her shoulders. Most of the nobles wear such thick layers of cosmetic that Marie isn’t sure she would even _know_ if they had such marks. Marie has no freckles of her own. She does, on occasion, still feel markings on her skin, however. When the nights are dark, when she shakes with fury, she feels (or thinks she feels) the tightening of her skin, the rippling echo of scales, too familiar and too strange.

Lydda's freckles fade, the longer she and her sisters remain in the dark of the dungeons. Time shows its passing in strange ways. Lydda's freckles fade, and Marie imagines her former scales more and more often.

It isn’t that Marie is ungrateful, for having been twice-saved from her curse. The adventurers brought her home, and then they returned her to her own true form. She will remember that. She will _never_ forget that debt, nor the debt that follows- her father’s knife-twist betrayal, the way he sent them away again-

Not Marie's fault, not Marie's mistakes. Guilt does not follow logical paths.

She does not think the adventurers know that they were never meant to win against the Bone King. She does not think they know that they were meant to be a distraction, the battering ram at the front gate to draw eyes away from the passages in the back, where her father’s own forces were meant to slip in like the fox into the coop.

(This is not a simile she would have been likely to use, before Lydda. It is not as if the castle is overwhelmed with foxes.)

It almost makes the betrayal worse, she thinks. Twice, the adventurers saved her. Twice they were betrayed. The false quest, and then-

The sisters. Stolen, held in trust. And then (as if merely keeping innocents as collateral were not cruel enough), then came the coup, and the dungeon.

It isn’t that Marie is ungrateful. It truly isn’t. But Marie thinks, perhaps, that if it just so happened that she were still under the curse- well.

No one would have _dared_ attempt to behead the father of a dragon. She could have turned Lord Denetrah into nothing more than bone and ash.

Min always flinches from the rats that scramble along the edges of the cell, and Seri asks each day for news of their brother, her voice so very small and so very brave, and Lydda’s eyes are as tired as Marie feels, and Marie remembers what it was like to have claws. Remembers fire in her lungs. Remembers _enormity_ , of both feelings and form. If she pulled the proper strings with the right degree of care, Marie could have Denetrah as dead as her father within the day, but it would not solve the true problem.

(It would not be as satisfying as the taste of the fire.)

Nor, Marie knows, would it guarantee the sisters' freedom.

They are as worthy as any princess, Marie thinks. She thinks this rather often. Lydda only ever stands like a rampart, noble and upright and still with the flash of humor in her eyes, despite the exhaustion, despite the weight of responsibility that Marie recognizes on her shoulders. Seri nearly thrums with excitement with each new book Marie smuggles in, her delight at the new stories nearly as vibrant as her relief at the distraction from her captivity. Min's laugh (rarer and rarer still) bounces and squeaks, echoing through the hollow stone chambers, far beneath Marie's home.

Marie knows they are her subjects, deserving of safety and freedom in her kingdom. Marie knows, in a way that feels much more urgent, that they are her friends, and she _wants_ to see them safe, and free.

She burns with waiting, despising the way Lydda's freckles nearly disappear entirely in the gray of the dungeons, but Marie is patient. She knows which strings need plucking, and she knows when, exactly, the right time is to pluck.

The adventurers return, triumphant and bedraggled, and are turned summarily away, and in the dark of night Marie pulls on a too-large cloak, and pulls open the old servants' passageways.

Marie knows many things, and Lydda knows many things, and their areas of knowledge barely seem to overlap at all. Marie is fond of that fact, because it means that they always seem to have something to teach each other.

Marie teaches Lydda, Seri, and Min how to cross her city, silent and unseen.

Lydda, Seri, and Min teach Marie exactly what a reunion looks like, in a family built on love.

It is nearly dawn, when they finally part. Marie cannot afford to be discovered, of course, and it is only a small pain that she cannot say her goodbyes to the sisters in the daylight, or in anything but a furtive whisper.

Min, earnest and unselfconscious, throws her arms around Marie in the sort of hug she is unsure she has ever shared, before. Lydda laughs at Marie's surprise, not unpleasantly, and then she and Seri fold around her as well.

One last lesson, before they part.

It is better, wiser, that the sisters will be far from the city, now. It is unsafe, here. Marie stays because Marie has no choice. Because to abandon her throne is- unthinkable. Marie is thirteen, and she knows her duty, knows her responsibility. Helping Lydda and Min and Seri escape this place reminds her of that, in a way. Her father was always so afraid, and so angry. Lord Denetrah is worse.

Marie thinks that there is something, perhaps, to the idea of being afraid when one is a ruler, though not in the fashion of her predecessors. She is afraid often, though she is not the sort to dwell. Marie hopes that when it is her turn to rule, her fears will be noble. She hopes that she will still hold close to the fear of disappointing the people who rely on her. She hopes that her rage will be noble, too. Her own little dragon-fire, under her own control, this time. She hopes she will not rule like those who rule now, like those who ruled before.

It is safer for Lydda and her sisters to be far away, though Marie will miss them dearly.

Lydda will write, however. Lydda will write, and Marie still has people enough that she trusts in these walls. Lord Denetrah pays little attention to the servants and chefs and such help, but Marie knows them. Knows the servants passageways in all the castle, not only in her room, and she knows other secret places as well. She knows which of her handmaidens are loyal, which will help, and she knows her missives and the ones she receives in return will be passed without interference.

Marie writes the first of these letters by firelight, careful and precise with the familiarity of flames making her brave.

She does not write of her fears. She does not write of Lord Denetrah, except to mock him with all the attention of a roll of the eyes and away. She does not write of her guilt, for sending Lydda’s brother away from her again, of sending her family away to help restore her own. Lydda knows all of it already, regardless. It is better, to leave certain things unwritten.

Marie writes of small things. She writes of the way the city sounds from above. She asks if Seri has finished her latest book. She writes of the new inks her tutor gave her to practice with, and she sends some to share. She nearly asks if Lydda's freckles are returning in the sun, but this page she removes, and rewrites. She asks Lydda when the next rains will come, instead.

Marie’s penmanship is impeccable, but when she receives Lydda's first reply, Marie cannot help but think that Lydda’s quick and tidy scrawl is so, so much more beautiful.

She refolds the letter, careful as if holding a recently sharpened blade, and then she tucks the parchment in behind the false brick beside the hearth, in among all her most valuable secrets, the most coveted jewel in her hoard.


End file.
